BRITON SET UP FALSE COMPANIES AND ACCOUNTS AND WAS USED AS CASH COURIER

The Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, which was made to pay a US$1.9 billion fine for laundering the money of Mexican drugs cartels is today named as a major bank involved in the laundering of massive boiler room fraud money in Asia.

And last year it was fined again for transferring money on behalf of Hezbollah - a matter brought to to the attention of the US Treasury by the compliance officer himself - Everett Stern who commented: "They admit to financing terrorism and they get fined $32,000. Where if I were to do that, I would go to jail for life."

And now the banking giant, its claimed, has been the bank of choice for ‘Wolf of Wall Street’ share scammers – mainly Brits and Americans based out of Bangkok where hundreds of millions of dollars have been invested in the sex trade.

Thai dancers at a boiler room run bar in Nana Plaza

Today the Fraud Recovery Group, comprising a group of some 90 victims who have defrauded by the scammers, operating, what are known as boiler rooms, named the banks used to launder money cheated out of unsuspecting clients in Britain, Europe and Australia.

And HSBC is shown to have provided banking facilities in at least seven accounts for seven different boiler room operations at branches in Hong Kong.

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"We accept responsibility for our past mistakes. We have said we are profoundly sorry for them, and we do so again. The HSBC of today is a fundamentally different organization from the one that made those mistakes," - HSBC Chief Executive Stuart Gulliver - after the mexican drug cartel fiasco

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Also named are the Bank of East Asia, the Hang Seng Bank, Citybank, Cathay United Bank and China Trust Commercial Bank.

The Bank of East Asia, claims the FRG, providing four accounts for three boiler room operations at its branches in Jervis Road, Hong Kong.

The Hang Seng Bank provided three accounts for three different boiler rooms at is branch in Des Voeux Road, Hong Kong.

The China Commercial Trust provided seven accounts for two boiler room operations in its branches at its branches at OBU, the International Financial Centre, and at Finance Street,

Citibank (Hong Kong) provided one account for a boiler room operation at his branch in King’s Road, Quarry Bay.

And Cathay United Bank provided four accounts for one boiler room operation at its branch in Harbour Road, Wanchai.

A Fraud Recovery Group spokesman said:

“Our due diligence has revealed that for this large-scale international boiler room scam (investment fraud) to have succeeded, which involved defrauding thousands of victims out of hundreds of millions of dollars. The fraudsters had to be assisted, knowingly or otherwise, by a number of internationally recognised banks, in what appears to be acts of gross negligence and/or in contravention of ‘International Standards on Combating Money Laundering and the Financing of Terrorism & Proliferation – the FATF’.

"There is little doubt that ‘business accounts’ were opened in these banks with the sole purpose of receiving and quickly transferring the substantial amounts of fraudulently obtained monies to other financial institutions. Despite the continuation of the inflow and outflow of vast amounts of ‘laundered’ money passing across these accounts, there is little evidence, if any, these banks ever questioned the origins of these funds or raised any ‘Suspicious Activity Reports’ (SARS) with their respective financial regulators.

"We have received due diligence indicating that bank officials in one specific jurisdiction have been paid to open receiving transaction accounts on behalf of the fraud syndicate.'

Hundreds of millions of dollars of the swindled cash has been moved into Thailand where crime syndicates have laundered it into the country’s lucrative sex trade. The Hong Kong Banks are in the main 'skipping' banks and the money is transferred on before being transferred to Thai banks, or brought in - in cash - the preferred route.

The banks of Thai lawyers, police, and even politicians, have been used, said the FRG spokesman and an Army General and Immigration Police had assisted the operations.

The master lease of Nana Entertainment Plaza in Bangkok is now in the hands of the same boiler room operators, through Thai nominees; as are sex venues in Soi Cowboy and the resort city of Pattaya, and Patong Beach, Phuket. Many sports and themed bars in the Thai capital are also under boiler room control as well as the most popular night clubs.

The principal conduit for these operations is the Eclipse Group running by Briton Paul Hayward, from Birmingham but nomially headed by Irishman Micky Doherty. US boiler room operator Glendon Bullard sub-leases many bars in the Nana Entertainment Plaza.

Strudwicke - and Thai wife Anne

Laundered money brought in in suitcases has also been used to buy up a range of villas in Pattaya, Koh Samui and Phuket.

The FRG has named one Briton David Strudwicke, one Dutchman, Albert André Hoogeveen, and an American citizen Michael Le Port, as the people who signed for off-the-shelf-companies, based in Hong Kong, and the Philippines.

Briton Strudwicke, 38, from Sutton Coldfield, formerly worked as a barman in ‘Dublin Jack’s’ in Hong Kong before opening the Bears Den in Chiang Mai (now closed).

Boiler room boys have a handsome stake in
this club in Soi Cowboy, Bangkok

But the latter was only a cover. He used to work for a British boiler room operator in Bangkok, known as ‘The Animal’ and is now reported to be working for Canadian operators.

The FRG claim he also as instrumental in moving boiler room cash to a resort in Australia - Mollymook, NSW.

Among many companies he registered himself as a director of was Grand Shaw Holdings in Singapore and in the Philippines, with an account in Hong Kong, a boiler room which was shut down by the Philippines Securities and Exchange Commission, after a complaint from Singapore Police. The Philippines SEC found that the addresses of the directors were either fictitious or the directors were unknown at the addresses.

Strudwicke's signature on company registration

Boiler rooms work with impunity in Thailand and boast they have both the army and police under their control – because they share in the profits.

Thai Police say they cannot prosecute without the victims. Boiler rooms are frequently raided but these appear to be money gathering operations as none of the bosses have made it to the courts.

SOCA, now the National Crime Agency, have had details of British victims for several years.

An HSBC spokesman said: ""We cannot comment on these allegations at this time. We take such allegations seriously and will investigate them thoroughly. HSBC is committed to stopping money laundering and financial crime."

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comments:

I don't know about your other readers but that fact these so-called "defrauded victims" are

1. Only looking out for their own little group instead of all the other thousands of victims

2. Offering these larcenous snakes a way to avoid justice instead of serving 10 years+

3. Resorting to blackmail

doesn't evoke sympathy for their cause. In their place, I'd be trying to get them convicted, not trying to hammer out a grubby little deal that gets the scum off the hook.

If someone comes along one day with steely determination to send each and every one of these people to prison and a damn sight more than hearsay and tired old circumstantial evidence that's been in the public domain for over a decade, I'm sure there'll be a lot more support and interest.

Until then, these defrauded victims are little more than a group of kids stamping their feet and threatening to scream if they don't get their way.

So how does the demand for $20 million fit into that agenda because the there's a clear tone in their posts which suggests that if the money is paid, no further action will be taken?

This is what they write in their first post:

"The group has approached the identified fraudsters with an offer to SETTLE THE ISSUE, a verified loss of USD 20 million. The Defendants have though met the group’s settlement proposals with silence"

Sorry but that sounds like this group of 90 or so defrauded investors is putting their own interests before the those of justice and those of the other thousands of other victims who may not have the resources to mount a similar campaign.

But I'll lay any money that those thousands of other victims wouldn't get as much as a whiff of the proceeds of any monetary settlement. Something doesn't quite add up about this "consortium"; they come over as illegitimate both in their methods and their stated aims but they have the benefit of the doubt . . . for now

I simply can't reconcile what I cut & paste from their first post with an unwavering determination to see these parasites prosecuted.

Hej john, I think you are quite wroing in your conclusions. I happen to know some of the people behind the Consortium of Defrauded Vicitms. They maintain to provide a great deal of volunteer support to victims who are linked to the case but act as "free riders" and did not join the group initially at a cost. You have no idea of what this initative has already created in terms of links and networks behind the scene. It is quite odd to, sort of, blaim the Consortium of Defrauded Vicitms, for the lack of actions legal agencies should have taken years ago. Do you really believe that the founders have not been in contact with multiple legal agencies in many different nations already? If the legal authorities had been successful - should we have seen the defrauded victims to continue to fight back as they do? The blog probably provides the most detailed information to people being defrauded by the same fraud syndicate and is as such of support to anyone looking for details. The Consortium is kind of driving the car right now with legal agencies and the banks recently to join as passengers to sit in the backseat to learn about the scale and impacts created by the fraud syndicate. But hey, what do you want to offer, John?

John, I too think you are wrong in your conclusions. This group is doing a world of good that goes way beyond any monies they (or any other victim) may collect. They've exposed the individuals involved in the scams, some of whom have posed as legitimate members of chambers of commerce in Thailand. They've outed the companies used to defraud, and in this last batch of posts, the dirty banks that have been complicit in facilitating the fraud. Also in the last batch, they've exposed the corrupt lawyers and law firms that have enabled it all - one which is still an AMCHAM member, another which posts "free" advice on TV. I'd say more than any other group, this one is earning any funds they may collect back. Hey John, how have you helped the cause?